I Tried Buying Likes on Instagram (So You Don't Have To)

For reference, I am not recommending whatsoever that you do this. When Instagram was founded, it was in the idea that people could show parts of their lives to each other; like a photo album that the whole internet got to be a part of.

When I was thinking about what was the next interesting thing that I could try, something that is entirely unique to the internet age, the first thing that came to mind was the idea of social media "paid followers" or "paid likes."

The reason this came to mind is simply because this new age idea of "measurable popularity" or "perceived relevance" in the twenty-first century is so new to this day and age. It seems like all we care about these days is WHAT we put on the internet and WHO cares enough to watch us.

You can't tell me that there hasn't been a time in your life that you haven't wanted to spite somebody or find a way to show someone else that your life is completely better off without them. With social media, it is now easier than ever to post pictures in a bikini on our Instagram or Snapchat stories, show off our vacations or just "how in love" each of us are with our lives. We are masters of the "highlight reel" effect, showing people only what we want them to see so that feelings of envy and jealousy are so easily established.

With new websites like "freelikesclub" or "iglikes," among other names, people willing to do a free trial or pay as little as 99 cents can get anywhere from 25 to 100 new likes or followers on their Instagram for free. The paid options range anywhere between getting 100 new followers to over 50,000 likes and followers, with prices for these options climbing as high as $10,000 to get a million new followers.

Now, your girl here does not have that kind of money. In fact, I don't have any kind of money to put towards trying to get followers on a social media app. So, instead of paying for the options to pay for likes on a photo, I decided to try out as many free options for followers and likes that I could, before Instagram realized that a ton of inactive accounts were trying to follow/spam me.

I started by uploading a picture for my baseline. It's this shot of me and my darling cat Luna. A fairly straightforward photo, that before I started putting the photo on the websites to get likes got just seven likes in the time it was uploaded before I managed to start running the "free trial" liking websites.

Next, I logged online and started putting my profile information into a variety of different websites to see what kind of interaction I could generate. I wasn't looking for anything specifically, just to see if any of these platforms generated any of the interaction (without a price tag) that they promised.

Almost immediately after putting my information, my phone started blowing up (reference the cover image).

After just 28 minutes of having the photo uploaded, it garnished 48 likes, which is actually about average for me when I upload content. I had gained a couple of new followers, especially from a couple of questionable accounts (such as FREEVISAGIFTCARD___ and some um *adult* accounts).

So far, nothing seemed out of the blue as extraordinarily different from normal interaction, except for the fact that a bunch of my OLDER photos were getting a lot of likes without any additional promotion. I was getting likes on photos from six months ago, which is what set off some alarm bells that a lot of the accounts being used to like the photos were bot accounts.

Some of the online platforms I used were noticeably sketchy. Many asked for you to put both your Instagram username and password in, which were sites that I promptly logged off of. Other required you to put your email address in, which was less sketchy, but it seemed if you put your real username in with a fake email address, the account came up as "unidentified" which was also a bit questionable.

To make it clear, I also didn't use hashtags or tagging, or any other means of getting attention to the photo. I wanted to see directly what these programs could do without the support of getting organic likes and interaction with content from other places.

Combined with Instagram's new disappointing algorithm, the level of difficulty of getting interaction on new content that you post has gotten significantly harder in recent years. Even with these "free trials" after almost an hour of being uploaded, the picture had just 107 likes, which was fine, but with the number of programs I tried and the "promises" made by these platforms, was a little disappointing (especially given how annoying it was to try and sign up for all these trials... I will definitely be enjoying the spam emails over the next few days *note my sarcasm.*)

I think there's a valuable lesson to be learned in all of this, and it's that what we've started making important in our day to day lives has changed. We put more value on the number of hashtags or likes on a photograph than the people in them, are concerned with where we go for the views and way it will make other people envious of us, rather than just be content with living in the moment enough to be self satisfied without outside validation.

I have so many friends of mine that have apps downloaded to their phone that will tell them just who is liking their pictures and following them, as well as those that have truly destroyed friendships over the little numbers next to their usernames on a phone screen. I have watched relationships crumble simply because of the amount of simple jealousy created with one person liking someone else's photo, someone getting blocked, or one person being ostracized from a group of friends or coworkers. The world is changing in the way we interact with one another, what we hide and what it is that we're willing to share, from our deepest regrets and secrets, mistakes, lost loves, or even something dumb as hiding the location of where a picture was taken just so people don't "copy you" (you think I'm kidding).

The little numbers sitting next to a name on a screen have made enemies of friends and taken every interaction to a new level of imagined significance.

If you do decide to buy yourself likes or followers (which I don't recommend), I recommend you think about the reason why you're deciding to do so before you complete the transaction. Is the point of social media to you to help other people hurt or feel lonely, just because that's how you feel underneath an exterior of being cushioned by the number of likes or followers your page has?

Sounds a lot like buying friends to me, and I thought we left that in elementary school.

UPDATE: After about an hour and a half, the photo reached over 250 likes, which means that some of the programs did end up working and propelling my number of likes up. My average number of likes is usually around 300, so I will have to see if at the end of the day if it reaches or passes that point. However, that doesn't at all mean that this is worth it. This is still stupid. Please @ me. I'm so serious, don't waste your money or get a virus on your computer or a bot to run your IG.

Total likes: 455

Real Total: A ton of bots liked my picture.

Be authentic people.